Growing and Learning Pains

Wow, what a busy few months it's been...trying to get our home studio in working order, kids getting out of school, practicing and working with new lighting techniques and ideas. Lots to catch up on and share!

One of the best highlights to start back into the blog with was a great wedding we had the privilege to shoot for Laura and Jonathan down at Ravenwood Castle. What a wonderful family to get to hang around with, let alone to get paid to shoot a wedding for. They made us feel just like one of the family and made our whole experience with them truly wonderful!!!

Photographically speaking there were a few challenges that we had to work out. The entire wedding was outdoors, in and out of the woods, which threw in all kinds of dappled, splotchy light. Couple that with it being a partly cloudy day that literally changed the lighting every 2 minutes and it had the makings of being a pretty rough shoot. These are situations where I just thank goodness Nikon has the Auto ISO ability. When you have light levels changing by the minute, you just don't have the time to manually set everything for every shot. Heather and I decided pretty quickly that Auto ISO and Aperture Priority was the way we were going to go...when dad is walking the bride down the isle through clouds and sun and leaves and trees you just don't have the time to adjust your camera every 5 feet they walk. All and all it turned out perfectly, though my D200 handled the metering sooooo much more accurately than Heather's D80. Before the next wedding we may upgrade her D80 to a D90 to gain that and a little better High ISO ability.

The photo at the top was all Heather's. We walked by that spot earlier in the day and she right away ran to that location and said, "We're bringing them right here!" - LOL Good call honey...

Jeffrey